tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post4658606019290862817..comments2013-07-18T11:26:50.963-07:00Comments on Lost Garden: Three False ConstraintsDaniel Cookhttps://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-43308484309830788742010-08-25T23:26:22.753-07:002010-08-25T23:26:22.753-07:00(sorry for commenting on such an old post, but i t...(sorry for commenting on such an old post, but i think i have something worthwhile to say)<br /><br />I definitely agree that &quot;more isn&#39;t better&quot; regarding content and machine power, but you can&#39;t toss out single player games because they impose certain constraints any more than you can toss out the law because it places constraints on how people conduct themselves and their business. Some of the most impressive, compelling games i&#39;ve seen are single player. By contrast, WoW, Facebook, and any other &quot;social games&quot; often offer the same bland (to me at least) social experience. If i want to be social, i can just go out to a cafe or a store; i don&#39;t need to spend my gaming time doing it too. I game because the games i play offer a unique experience different than anything else i know.<br /><br />Making games multiplayer also imposes a hard problem: that of controlling players. No one likes griefers, trolls, or insulting/rude/gross (for lack of a better word) players, but adding mechanisms for communication between players means you either have to accept an unrated (or mature, depending) rating for your game or control what the players can do and say in your game. Controlling the latter is nigh-on impossible (see any number of forums and chat sites that try to filter content), and controlling the former is almost as tough.<br /><br />All i&#39;m saying is that before you &quot;cast off the constrainsts of single player games&quot;, look at what walls you&#39;ll be running into in your chosen type of game first.S Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012780438760359896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-55751163255973036612010-05-12T20:16:05.871-07:002010-05-12T20:16:05.871-07:00I&#39;m not sure what to say, so this will probabl...I&#39;m not sure what to say, so this will probably be a little disjointed.<br /><br />I dislike it when people make statements that seem to say that something is inherently better than something else. i.e. multi-player is more capable than single-player of being meaningful and deep; at least, that&#39;s what I read into your words. I&#39;m a little annoyed at the moment.<br /><br />Multiplayer rarely excites me, and reading your words feels like you&#39;re trying to lock me out of a world of meaningful videogames simply because I prefer to play and design single-player games.<br /><br />I realize single-player isn&#39;t going anywhere, but that&#39;s not enough to calm me right now. I <i>know</i> single-player is just as capable as multi-player. There are just certain experiences that you can&#39;t have in a multi-player environment, experiences that require the player to know that it&#39;s just him and the designer working together to make an experience.<br />Of course multi-player has its place too, I know that. <i>Sleep is Death</i> is one game I very much like the idea of even thought I can&#39;t see myself playing it, and can&#39;t wait to see more games come along that follow the same or similar principles.<br /><br />Anyway.<br /><br /><br />Mostly it&#39;s just the tone I (perhaps mistakenly) inferred from your post that&#39;s bothering me. I realize you&#39;re probably just trying to make a specific point and being as blunt about it as possible.<br />However if you do think that way... well, good sir, your challenge is accepted.<br /><br />I&#39;m currently neck deep in a project... a co-op only platformer, in fact... but I have an idea in mind for a single-player game about player world-sculpting and becoming a vampire, and as soon as I&#39;m free I&#39;m writing it up as a proper design document. I&#39;m playing it out in my head already and I&#39;m getting that special feeling that it just might be worth pursuing to completion. I&#39;ll make sure to let you know how that goes, maybe I can turn you just a little. Probably not though, and maybe that&#39;s for the better. We all need to be different from each other.<br /><br />I&#39;m rambling so I&#39;ll call it quits.<br /><br /><br />(Despite disagreeing with you I&#39;m bookmarking this blog because you do bring up a lot of good points and I enjoy reading what you have to say.)Steinihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01961749016839551620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-25858790655097690832010-02-17T16:57:01.225-08:002010-02-17T16:57:01.225-08:00Very nice article and comments. I would just like ...Very nice article and comments. I would just like to say that &quot;social&quot; games are actually anti-social. Those games can turn people into zombies if they don&#39;t quit playing them. They make players believe they are engaging in a social activity, when in reality they are chatting with strangers about stuff that nobody in the real world cares about. Also, those games are more addictive, because when you play against other people the possibilities are endless. For instance, in WoW people get tired of the dungeons, quests, even raiding, but not from PvP and Arena. You also have real people on your team, so you feel like a part of a group. Just look at youtube at all the videos of how people are trying to quit WoW or other supposedly social games, it&#39;s just like trying to quit drugs. Yes, there are conversations in the game but after you close the game you realize that this is not real social interaction. Finally, this problem with MMO games is shown very well in the Avatar movie: the hero plays a virtual game and he becomes so involved in the game that he loses weight, doesn&#39;t shave, stops going out and spends most of his time in the game. He even has a girlfriend in the game and little by little loses all touch with reality.Eichwulfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776589304461737259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-35997000981646770242010-01-10T00:31:37.177-08:002010-01-10T00:31:37.177-08:00Playing Baron now. I&#39;ve been blocked by the a...Playing Baron now. I&#39;ve been blocked by the author about 15 times so far. Interactive fiction irritates me with how it pretends to allow player agency. (Most AAA console titles suffer the same issue, so I try to be somewhat even handed in my irritation) But I will still play through...<br /><br /><b>Exploring spatial-temporal metaphors</b><br />There are indeed plenty of folks pursuing this territory. Arguably, single player consumable games with a narrative arc are the predominant form of game being created on mature platforms and mature genres. When you have so many lifetimes and fortunes poured into an activity there are bound to be a few passionate devotees that attempt to raise their craft to a form of art. It is the way of culture. It happens with food. It happens with song. It happens with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dd%C5%8D" rel="nofollow">smelling pieces of wood</a>. Certainly it can happen with the narrative elements of a game. <br /><br />So yes, you can take whatever brief spark that is in this particular niche of game design and you can polish and tweak and probe and lavish immense thought and attention upon it. Good. Each creator has their own star that guides them. <br /><br />And yet... <br /><br />There are other paths that talk about games in terms of religion, government, culture, sports where players interact with other players in ways that concretely shape their world. <br /><br />Why not take a bit of time to explore those? <br /><br />If you are in the same place in another 20 years that you are now, complaining about the same narrative limitations that game designers have complained about for the last 20 years, maybe it is worth looking at games from a new perspective. I suggest one informed by the natural expressive talents inherent in the medium: people, systems, culture, and learning. <br /><br />take care<br />Danc.Danchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10437870541630835660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-24859040701711791582010-01-09T22:39:52.669-08:002010-01-09T22:39:52.669-08:00Interesting post, Danc.
I&#39;m late to the party...Interesting post, Danc.<br /><br />I&#39;m late to the party, but I just want to throw my hat in the ring and agree with the points already made by John Evans, Simon, and Kim. I think that the notion of spatial and temporal metaphor is still a potentially fruitful avenue of pursuit for expressing meaning through game systems with an arbitrary number of players (well, &gt;= 1), and I still hold out hope that it can yield some more interesting results that will eventually surpass Rohrer&#39;s existing efforts.<br /><br />Just because Jason is currently focusing on multiplayer games (which, just to clarify, I also consider a perfectly valid direction to explore) doesn&#39;t reduce the landscape of systemic and spatial metaphor games to a barren &quot;desert&quot;, as you attempt to characterize it. There are plenty of other folks exploring this territory, such as Rod Humble with <em>The Marriage</em> or Doris C. Rusch with <em>Akrasia</em>, and I find your stance to be unnecessarily dismissive of their efforts.<br /><br />&quot;There is only so much you can say about people using X, Y coordinates&quot; makes for a swell sound bite, but it is ultimately reductive and overlooks the tremendously elastic and diverse expressive potential of metaphor.<br /><br />PS - Seconding John&#39;s mention of <em>The Baron</em> as an example of a single-player game with an intriguing approach to presenting meaningful choices.Jamey Stevensonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15294298956590480597noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-45488918015673597412009-12-22T08:57:17.571-08:002009-12-22T08:57:17.571-08:00dehix
I didn&#39;t see your email address. Feel ...dehix<br /><br />I didn&#39;t see your email address. Feel free to write me at danc@lostgarden.com. <br /><br />take care<br />Danc.Danchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10437870541630835660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-60850059848675876102009-12-22T01:39:59.421-08:002009-12-22T01:39:59.421-08:00Danc,
I really enjoyed your article, and even if...Danc, <br /><br />I really enjoyed your article, and even if I don&#39;t agree with everything, I have to admit that I have the same point of view on most of your ideas. <br /><br />I would like to go further next year and use this kind of article as requirements to produce different/meaningful games. I would like you to follow this process and be maybe an active part of the project. I&#39;m working for a huge company in Europe which is more about &quot;communication&quot; and &quot;social interaction&quot; than games, and which wants to move into game more deeply next year. I&#39;m in charge of the R&amp;D on games and apps for this company. <br /><br />I would be delighted to discuss that further with you. Please contact me if you are interested. <br />Cheers.dehixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03589690365860171070noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-524485598050859752009-12-19T09:11:15.844-08:002009-12-19T09:11:15.844-08:00I&#39;m a little surprised by how negative the rea...I&#39;m a little surprised by how negative the reactions here are. I think the point is that the staggering popularity of FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is because of the (limited) social inclusion there is in them. <br /><br />I think most people with a sincere interest in games and what makes them tick find the current offering of these (mainly Facebook) &quot;Social Games&quot; pretty lacking. If they&#39;re so bad, though, then we should focus on what is good about them, and see if we can combine these attributes to make something we&#39;re a little more proud of as an industry. <br /><br />One thing I am a little worried about, and Danc mentions it in the post on Testosterone and competitive gaming, is the tendency for games to shy away from skill-based activity in favour luck- or grind-based rewards. After playing through a couple dozen of these social games recently, it seems like Social Game Designers are stripping out the &quot;Hard Fun&quot; of skill-based victory without replacing it with a more meaningful, socially-involved payoff.* <br /><br />I think it&#39;s because of this hollowness that classical gamers reject these new Social Games. However, we are overlooking the fact that they contain enough entertainment that non-gamers, who don&#39;t know that <i>Roller Coaster Kingdom</i> is a watered-down version of <i>Theme Park</i> and that <i>Restaurant City</i> and <i>Café World</i> are the retarded grandchildren of <i>Pizza Tycoon</i>. <br /><br />Perhaps most important, though, is that by failing to provide better alternatives to these disappointing shadows of early 90&#39;s gaming, we fail to do any good for <i>either</i> camp - widening the (artificial) rift between people who like games as social facilitators, and people who like games because they possess some intrinsic fun. <br /><br />Instead of deriding these dumb stupid social games, we should look at what makes them popular, and see if we can make them <i>good</i> as well. <br /><br /><br />* I think I would suggest another false constraint that games must be both Symmetric, and worse, <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum" rel="nofollow">Zero-Sum.</a></b> I hate these assumptions and I want them to die.Brandy_http://www.blogger.com/profile/04642226002919540838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-1113730855023711252009-12-17T19:22:37.573-08:002009-12-17T19:22:37.573-08:00Until I read your notes at the end, I was about ge...Until I read your notes at the end, I was about get on here and leave a &quot;Get your hands off my introversion, you damn, dirty ape!!&quot; comment. :D<br /><br />To be honest, I have a somewhat opposite response to the &quot;multiplayer is the answer to everything&quot; approach. Really, I view that as something of a cop-out to take responsibility off of developers. Like, &quot;why bother creating content when we can just put out a game engine?&quot;<br /><br />I also get a little rolly-eyed when I hear people theorizing about the implications of upcoming technology. I remember back in the 90&#39;s where everyone was talking about never needing to leave your home again because shopping, work, school, EVERYTHING, would be done online. That didn&#39;t happen. Now people are saying 90% of computing will take place on a 2.5&quot;x3.5&quot; screen, aka a phone, and I just have to chuckle. That just sucks!! Are you kidding?! <br /><br />Then, I see industry folks on C-SPAN talking about YouTube and user content becoming the future of entertainment. Really?! Your argument against single-player strikes me as the same line of logic saying that user submitted YouTube clips are gonna replace television and movies. To me, that would be the DEATH of meaningful content. Saying single player games are dinosaurs for the socially inept and those incapable of modern thinking is like saying the same thing about movies, television, books, music, etc. Video games are like, what, 30 years old? I think your giving up on single player a little soon.<br /><br />Of course, you DO have a fantastic point about extroverts not being catered to in video-gaming and that someone will eventually figure out a way to reach them. On one hand, I REALLY don&#39;t care since they have so much other stuff they like to do (I mean, they like to leave the house!), but on the other hand, it does scare me a little. If you are right and extroverts become the primary consumer of gaming, say 2/3rds, business, especially corporations, runs on the model of finding the one or two archetypes that make the most money and everything else can rot. That&#39;s what happened with major record labels. Under that scenario, I suspect large budget, single player games would virtually cease to exist. I guess then I&#39;d have to buy most of my video games from Indie developers, just like I&#39;ve had to buy ALL my music from Indie labels for the last 10-15 years. In small amounts, I kinda like multiplayer games, but most of the time, they shear fact of having to depend on other players (for anything!), makes them more stressful than fun.<br /><br />To be honest, I think the real reason multiplayer only/MMO style games are being pursued as vigerously as they are by the industry is because that&#39;s a sure way to defeat piracy and rake in the dough. I don&#39;t think &quot;meaningful content&quot; has a lick to do with it.Technomancerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16328647181074754500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-11319745979160662702009-12-14T17:44:32.314-08:002009-12-14T17:44:32.314-08:00Re the chat rooms. Saw a girl on a forum who wante...Re the chat rooms. Saw a girl on a forum who wanted a 360 for x-mas. Not very interested in games though but explained that ALL of her friends were playing online and voice chatting with each other while playing. So she wanted the 360 JUST to be able to connect and participate in the discussions.<br /><br />Found it very interesting; a communication platform for you and your friends, integrated with multiplayer games, text chat, movies etc. And a subscription system that ensures income for the service provider no matter what. The traditional view on the console as a games machine with games full och square jawed killers and little springy plumbers is rather limited in an age where the social network means everything. Or atleast enough for someone to buy a 360 as a very power hungry chat device.Anal Elf Kidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08384733112262526719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-4082831512495339702009-12-11T12:32:26.432-08:002009-12-11T12:32:26.432-08:00Great article as always, although I found myself f...Great article as always, although I found myself feeling a bit &quot;get to this point&quot; reading this one. As soon as I realized that &quot;multiplayer&quot; was the big answer, I was a big disinterested as obviously multiplayer can solve any &quot;problem&quot; of game design - as well as it can break it. The biggest problem here is - although this is really just another constraint - developers don&#39;t have control over a multiplayer environment. In Nintendo&#39;s pictochat, you don&#39;t know if there is going to be a meaningful, growing conversation or relationship in a pictochat room, or someone just drawing obscene things. Granted, this can be solved by chat filters and such, as seen in environments like Club Penguin. But to fully &quot;solve&quot; the problem of human nature, you find yourself back at the other end, with all of the constraints. That said, I cannot deny that I made one of my best friendships exclusively possible through the MMO game EverQuest, and I am sure many other people share such a story. So, obviously, multiplayer is a very important point to consider, I just don&#39;t think it is the &quot;true answer&quot; to all of these issues.<br /><br />As far as &quot;big developers&quot; holding onto high tech specifications and such, well, I&#39;d have to argue that maybe you&#39;re defining the wrong people as &quot;big devleopers&quot;. Maybe a decade or so ago Epic Games and id Software would have been my immediately choices as &quot;big developers&quot;. However, in today&#39;s game development landscape, I wouldn&#39;t even think of them for a moment before blurting out &quot;PopCap&quot;. And this is coming from someone who grew up on Quake.<br /><br />Thanks for the great read as always! Keep the insightful and thought provoking articles coming.twincannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06948687774590030345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-36594793751516926892009-12-10T07:00:57.400-08:002009-12-10T07:00:57.400-08:00You&#39;ve obviously put a lot of thought into thi...You&#39;ve obviously put a lot of thought into this article, but I disagree with your premise. I haven&#39;t had a multiplayer game create more &quot;meaning&quot; than a single player game. Perhaps the social interaction of the players playing the game has been meaningful, but often it was completely disconnected from the game. It was the social interaction that was meaningful. The game was merely a meeting place. To say the game held meaning would be like saying the room a party was held in was meaningful: it has some impact, but it does not deserve the majority of the credit.<br /><br />Furthermore, your idea that single player games cannot provoke emtion is ridiculous to me. The most obvious example to me is Shadow of the Colossus. I doubt I&#39;ll ever play a multiplayer game that touches on the same feelings of lonliness (you&#39;re the only living human pictured for the vast majority of the game), regret (the moment after you slay your first Colossus is one of the most impacting moments I&#39;ve ever seen in a videogame), despair and hope. To say that a Facebook game will reach those levels of emotion seems almost insulting.Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14026738079196691199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-88732329905056773692009-12-08T22:14:29.396-08:002009-12-08T22:14:29.396-08:00Hi,
It’s an interesting article. Thanks for sharin...Hi,<br />It’s an interesting article. Thanks for sharing. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.bizplancorner.com/articles/24/Business-Plan-Service.aspx" rel="nofollow"> Business Plan Service</a>Planhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18021792466050879429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-42218537780029861482009-12-07T23:15:33.320-08:002009-12-07T23:15:33.320-08:00&quot;To the participants in the conversation, thi...&quot;To the participants in the conversation, this chatter that results is more entertaining than the best writing or acting performed by the top talent in any medium.&quot;<br /><br />I&#39;m going to call into question this assumption.<br /><br />At its most basic level, if this were true people would only go to movies by themselves: If they had someone else to spend time with, they would obviously prefer to spend time chatting with them.<br /><br />You can see the proof of this in virtually any MMO. While there are undoubtedly a few people who play <i>World of Warcraft</i> in order to hang out in the chat channels all day, that isn&#39;t true for the vast majority of players.<br /><br />Nor am I particularly convinced that the typical content of a WoW chat channel really qualifies the game as &quot;culturally meaningful&quot;.Justin Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02227895898395353754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-84571628888425814212009-12-07T21:51:58.773-08:002009-12-07T21:51:58.773-08:00@Mark
The answer to question of why most evocative...@Mark<br />The answer to question of why most evocative stimuli is (primarily) an individual pursuit comes from how these experiences are processed by the brain. <br /><br />A movie relive or reprocess an existing experience that is already stored away in your noggin. <br /><br />A game lets you create a new experience. <br /><br />It is the difference between looking at a photo of a party and experiencing being at the party. <br /><br />The former can easily be a single player activity. The later is inherently multiplayer (since in this specific example, parties are inherently social events) <br /><br />Re: Other arts that are perhaps better examples: <br />- Improv: Where some of the improv crew are players<br />- Government: Where the game designer is the legislative branch and the code is the executive branch. Customer service is the judicial branch. <br />- Architecture: Where design is the architecture and the players are people using the building. If LeCorbusier considers a house &#39;a machine for living&#39;, then a formal game can be considered &#39;a machine for playing&#39;. <br /><br />take care<br />Danc. <br /><br />PS: I updated the essay with a notes section.Danchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10437870541630835660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-72051869144489160682009-12-07T21:33:50.347-08:002009-12-07T21:33:50.347-08:00Your point is that multiplayer games with player-c...Your point is that multiplayer games with player-created content should be a fertile area for creating meaningful games, and I don&#39;t disagree. However, after thinking about this for a week I have two observations. The first I&#39;m not sure is helpful, though it is curious. The second, though, makes me think that multiplayer is not the only hope for meaningful games. <br /><br />The first observation: It is interesting that &quot;people in a room talking&quot; is a mainstay of both movies and books, and yet the actual act of enjoying a movie or book is primarily a private one. Sure, we go to the movies with our friends, but while the actors spend most of the movie talking the audience is expected to be quiet. (Though, as with games, we love to talk with our friends about the experience afterwards). I&#39;m not sure what to make of this. Like I said, curious but maybe not helpful.<br /><br />The second: There other arts that are often not about &quot;people in a room talking.&quot; Painting, music, photography, sculpture, installation art, etc. Most of these are usually enjoyed by oneself and often do not involve people in a room talking. Many don&#39;t involve people at all (Beethoven, Georgia O&#39;Keeffe, Frank Lloyd Wright)<br /><br />There&#39;s a strong focus in this essay on books and movies, both of which rely strongly on narrative. Multiplayer seems like fertile ground if you are trying to explore how games can have meaningful narrative. However, what about these other arts? What is the game equivalant of a good photograph? Or a symphony? Abstract paintings seem to be enjoyed on the merits of their aesthetic appeal. Single player games like Passage or The Marriage seem to come closer to this than multiplayer games. I&#39;m not sure where this leads, but it is interesting to ponder.Mark Iveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04376066516837952208noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-62053199569434825422009-12-06T17:55:53.313-08:002009-12-06T17:55:53.313-08:00Usually I get bored of multiplayer games after awh...Usually I get bored of multiplayer games after awhile. The game gives me some really neat abilities initially, which I have fun using - but then I realize that it&#39;ll be an endless grind.<br /><br />On &quot;Multiplayer Games are the Future:&quot;<br /><br />You&#39;re right, but for the wrong reason. I&#39;ll compare this situation with the development of music.<br /><br />Just as our elements of music have evolved over time, so have our instruments. The piano did not exist in the Baroque era, but its predecessor, the harpsichord, did; however, the harpsichord could not hold a single note over a period of time the way a piano can by pressing the sustain pedal.<br /><br />So the Baroque composers got creative. Since they couldn&#39;t just play notes and sustain them, they instead developed a style where they fluttered between two notes, like a slow trill, which didn&#39;t exactly &quot;sustain&quot; a note the same way as a wind instrument, but it did continue the two sounds for however long they were needed in the music.<br /><br />Years later in the Classical period, after the piano started to make its appearance, the pieces composed were a little slower and used longer notes instead of the short, fluttering Alberti bass of the Baroque period. But was the Alberti bass thought of as completely backwards, and shelved forever? No! The two different ways of producing a sustained sound provided two different &quot;colors&quot; to music; one of them feels much faster, or at least never stops moving - the other is very clear and direct. Now, in the Modern era, the composer has so many choices because of all the developments of music over time - do I want a fluttering Alberti bass? Or maybe cluster chords out of the Impressionistic era? What if I added in a celeste part here?<br /><br />Your single-player vs multi-player argument is the same idea. The two perspectives are limits to the game, but they are also &quot;colors&quot;; a single-player game has different strengths than a multi-player game. It values the narrative and gives the player uninterrupted access to the game world. A multi-player game usually limits the player&#39;s access, sometimes by a &quot;You Must Be This Level to Enter the Dark Sanctuary,&quot; sometimes by another player killing all the goblins in the area you were farming for goblin ears. Narratives in multiplayer games (especially MMOs) are tough or impossible to create, which is why games like Farmville suit the multi-player genre so well.<br /><br />We may have entered a &quot;Multiplayer Era,&quot; where the majority of games created are social games. But there will still be single-player games, and not because of the reasons you listed. Would you call a choir performing the Handel Messiah a bunch of old fogies that &quot;stubbornly stick to their dead end craft, serving a smaller and more rarified audience while the world shifts around them?&quot;<br /><br />Making something meaningful is not about following trends. Meaning comes from having something to say. There are games that beg to be made into multiplayer games, but you can&#39;t add meaningfulness where there was none just by adding players. Your players will react to the lack of purpose and will not stay (I know I wouldn&#39;t).<br /><br />Don&#39;t think in trends; think in colors. What &quot;color&quot; will this mechanic add to my game? What situations will this combination of mechanics present? What needs am I addressing, and what questions am I asking?Bardbariennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10443725594221689703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-59843671541872870482009-12-06T02:24:17.525-08:002009-12-06T02:24:17.525-08:00&quot;Did you know for example that player respond...&quot;Did you know for example that player respond stronger emotionally to multiplayer games than single player games? That they rate them as more enjoyable? That they play for longer? This is a big broad trend. There are exceptions, but they are just that...exceptions.&quot;<br /><br />I&#39;m genuinely interested to know where you get these stats from danc. I am in the multiplayer camp myself, but I&#39;ve seen a lot of people&#39;s comments after the 23%-attempted-multiplayer-in-Demigod issue and it looks like I am quite in the minority.Melf_Himselfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09989146159619414666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-48446844721821771332009-12-04T12:22:42.556-08:002009-12-04T12:22:42.556-08:00My comment to your post was around 3000 characters...My comment to your post was around 3000 characters over the limit, so I will instead link you to my response via my <a href="http://azeltirwrite.blogspot.com/2009/12/response-to-three-false-constraints.html" rel="nofollow">blog</a>.<br /><br />In short, I disagree with a large number of your points - as a single-player game enthusiast, many of your arguments ring very untrue to my ears. I hope you see fit to continue this conversation.<br /><br />BenAzeltirhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12809603653850597281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-61687790642398249312009-12-04T11:12:16.376-08:002009-12-04T11:12:16.376-08:00I don&#39;t think it&#39;s as simple as dismissing...I don&#39;t think it&#39;s as simple as dismissing the Holodeck as a false ideal.<br /><br />First you dismissed it because of physics. The holodeck idea can be implemented just as well if you plug your brain into some computer rather then step inside a room. In that case the physics issues disappear. That ability is fast approaching.<br /><br />The second is that it is some how isolating. There&#39;s nothing that says the experience can&#39;t be multi-player but the problems are still just as hard single or multi-player. Sure, like in WoW, I wouldn&#39;t mind slaying the dragon with a bunch of friends. In the holodeck version, I shouldn&#39;t be able to tell the difference between NPCs and real people except that likely I&#39;d assume any character not on a quest is likely not a real player (who wants role play the talkative full of stories bar tender?)<br /><br />Whether you can make those NPCs for single player or multi-player they are just as important.<br /><br />As for real pain like eating worms, I don&#39;t need it to be real, just real enough to be fun. My BFG can feel heavy but my simulated character has no problem carrying it easily for long periods.<br /><br />The issue of multi-player getting higher ratings is a copout IMO. There are tons of very crappy games that are fun simply because they are multi-player. Can&#39;t design a fun game? Tack on multi-player and it claim you created fun when in reality the players created the fun, not the designer.<br /><br />Take care<br />gmangmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01307082737777834851noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-716366921611224872009-12-03T20:54:11.618-08:002009-12-03T20:54:11.618-08:00substituting ai dialog with chat room conversation...substituting ai dialog with chat room conversation ... sorry but that&#39;s kind of lame! there are many reasons why i run from multiplayer games. one is the dialog coming from other players that spoils the game for me.saschahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18056564736999556755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-22573995848019501402009-12-02T22:42:36.142-08:002009-12-02T22:42:36.142-08:00Hi you,have a nice day ^^! . Your blog is very nic...Hi you,have a nice day ^^! . Your blog is very nice .I really like it !<br /><br /><br /><br />----------------------------------<br />Welcome to my website : <a rel="nofollow"><b>http://9wallpapers.blogspot.com/</b></a> . This<br />is a website where have a lot of beautiful wallpapers .Especially ,<br />all free !!!!Jethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07876737942640934293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-16619474216801423202009-12-02T16:54:08.614-08:002009-12-02T16:54:08.614-08:00Dan,
Great post. Thought provoking. I take issue ...Dan,<br /><br />Great post. Thought provoking. I take issue with a couple points, but that doesn&#39;t detract from my overall agreement.<br /><br />Some points:<br />- While I agree multi-player is a rich environment in which to explore a bunch of these concepts, it shouldn&#39;t negate our search for solutions to the AI problems. Indeed, perhaps Turing AI or AI-driven narrative is 50 years out, but that doesn&#39;t mean we should give up. So, parallel paths, not &#39;student body left&#39;.<br /><br />- I do wonder whether multiplayer to some degree breaks the magic circle. Can I as a player *really* test anything without consequence when there&#39;s a real person on the other end? Consequence can be minimized, but it&#39;s still there. Doesn&#39;t negate your point, but worth considering.<br /><br />- Your point about AI-driven narrative being difficult deliver &quot;the conveyance of the developer’s crafted message&quot; assumes there is a *crafted message*. See Clint Hocking&#39;s latest post for a well thought out contrarian opinion:<br />http://www.clicknothing.com/click_nothing/2009/11/on-auteurship-in-games.html<br />Money quote: &quot;I believe very fundamentally that the more authorship is removed, the more room there is in a game for beauty. By extension, I further believe that the more the &#39;auteur&#39; abdicates his own &#39;singular vision&#39; to those with whom he is collaborating in the creation of the game, the more room there is in the game for beauty&quot;<br /><br />So maybe this form of AI is a tool toward abdicating the auteur&#39;s vision? Hmmm...<br /><br />Finally, on this point:&quot;The vast majority of single player games have their roots in either timing, mathematics or spatial manipulation puzzles. These systems, though entertaining and relaxing, have great difficulty modeling emotions. &quot;<br /><br />I agree this is true in many cases, there are cases where the SYSTEMS themselves evoke emotion, and state things about the human condition. Examples like Ayiti and The McDonalds game come to mind. Both statements attempting to model real world systems subject to feedback loops that make winning next to impossible. And learning that first hand as the player, gives you an inkling what it&#39;s like to walk a mile in the shoes of a 3rd world laborer, minimum wage worker, etc.<br /><br />Like you said, tough problems, and I&#39;m all for taking new approaches. I don&#39;t think we shouldn&#39;t keep at the current tough problems as well though.kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10418501466730095519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-76475516116293323392009-12-02T10:55:40.016-08:002009-12-02T10:55:40.016-08:00The Holodeck
gman, I&#39;m glad you brought up the...<b>The Holodeck</b><br />gman, I&#39;m glad you brought up the Holodeck. At some point I&#39;ll need to do an essay on how this meme has polluted and corrupted the development of games. :-) Just as there exist false constraints, there also exist false prophets: big exciting visions that are ultimately a dead end. <br /><br />History is replete with false prophets: The dream of a perpetual motion machine, the dream of turning lead into gold using solvents, or more recently the rocket jetpack. All these ended up being hard problems and were ultimately abandoned by all but a fringe element. <br /><br />The Holodeck isn&#39;t real. It is a narrative made exciting and tangible through the use of narrative tricks and special effects. It is the equivalent of dog fighting in space as shown by Star Wars. Absolutely thrilling and it certainly sparks the imagination, but unfortunately functioning inventions in a real world are bound by physics quite different than those found on film. The Holodeck may not be realistic for the next 50 years. It may not even be desirable. <br /><br />I look at the Holodeck and see a narrative that expresses an introverted adolescent&#39;s dream. Escape, fake people who will treat me like a friend, and canned excitement to replace that which is missing from my current life. <br /><br />This is such a depressing reality if brought and made real. <br /><br />First: The basic isolation of the vision. Instead of bringing people together it pushes people into their own isolated bubble. <br /><br />Second: The experience of reading about a character being locked in a deadly trap vs actually being locked in a deadly trap is radically different. One is an empathetic tingle, while the other is the actual experience. It is the difference between watching a TV reality show and being on one. Do you really think the guy eating the bowl of slug vomit is having as much fun as you watching him eat it? This realism fetish ends up yielding a very different experience than what is portrayed in the fake flights of fancy you watched as an impressionable child. Narrative cheats always make their ideas look good. Even Marxism was amazing on paper. <br /><br />Now it is incredibly important that we have mad visionaries pursuing fringe dreams. I love the idea that some people will go after the dream of making a Holodeck. And arguably we&#39;ve learned a handful of techniques from our initial dogged pursuit of an unlikely concept. <br /><br />Yet currently, 90% of the game industry&#39;s effort is being put into a questionable vision that is yielding diminishing returns. What a waste. <br /><br />If history is any indication, there is bound to be a correction. Alchemy gave way to chemistry and physics. The vision of a flying man gave way to aeronautics and aerospace. It is beyond time that the false prophet of the Holodeck be replaced by pragmatic techniques for bringing meaningful games to the masses. That means scientifically looking at what actually works and building off the results. Not ignoring the result in order to make an arbitrary vision come true. <br /><br />Did you know for example that player respond stronger emotionally to multiplayer games than single player games? That they rate them as more enjoyable? That they play for longer? This is a big broad trend. There are exceptions, but they are just that...exceptions. Here&#39;s a thought exercise: If you were to put the dream of the Holodeck out of your mind and you were to accept the findings above to be true, what sort of games would you make? What does would it mean for our future vision of game design?<br /><br />take care<br />Danc.Danchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10437870541630835660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-1853119258532635512009-12-02T10:42:02.935-08:002009-12-02T10:42:02.935-08:00Very thought-provoking point. I agree that there i...Very thought-provoking point. I agree that there is an immense amount of unexplored potential in social games, which I am very excited about, but I wouldn&#39;t discount single-player experiences either.<br /><br />For the same reasons that non-fiction books exist, alongside novels both trashy and great, I think more intellectual, single-player games will continue to exist. It was your articles about teaching skills through games that helped convince of this most strongly, actually. Single-player games will remain, to teach us chemistry or cooking or agriculture or whatever, though they might involve a social component as well.<br /><br />But right now, social games for artistic purposes are the least explored, the least understood, and perhaps the most different from what has already developed. So I do think it is worth crusading for.<br /><br />To reply to some of the other comments, which I do agree with for the most part, <b>it&#39;s not about conversation</b>. Sitting around the table talking is just an example, that stands in for all the things that are easy for humans to do but more or less impossible for computers.<br /><br />I wrote about this same idea quite a while ago, in the blog post <a href="http://evolutionlive.blogspot.com/2009/03/instant-ai-just-add-people.html" rel="nofollow">Instant AI - Just Add People</a>. I&#39;m sure I got the idea from Danc originally, though.axchohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00476494070603611505noreply@blogger.com